I love to pick berries. I was born at our berry and fish camp when the salmon berries were ripe. Alaska has some of the best tasting berries; salmon berries, black berries, blue berries, high bush and low bush cranberries, rosehips and currants.
Before we had refrigerators and freezers our parents would pick and store their berries in 25 to 50 pound wooden barrels. Sometimes these berry-filled barrels would be left at a berry patch on the tundra and picked up in the winter.
The women of the household would use their ulus (õõ-lous) and chop up a dinner portion from the frozen berries that is stored on the porch. We made our own Eskimo icecream by mixing our berries into a fluffy, oily, sweet mixture of shortening, oil, water and sugar.
Salmon berries are a favorite berry.
